Читать книгу The In-Between Hour - Barbara White Claypole - Страница 11

Three

Needles of rain softened to a drizzle as Will slipped on his Ray-Bans and became another B-list celebrity walking through Central Park. A bag lady ranted about the Apocalypse, and a beautiful young woman pushing a double stroller smiled at him. Or maybe she was appreciating the ridiculously large bouquet of flowers he had bought for his overworked publicist.

The path climbed steeply toward Dene Rock, and Will followed. He would perch on the outcrop and find the solution to unraveling this mess with his dad. Lying once about Freddie’s death had been an unforgivable lapse of judgment, and yet Will was now stuck in the middle of that lie—a spider caught in its own web. The old man had hooked up with the substitute art teacher, and the two of them were tracking Freddie’s trip with an energy previously reserved for circumventing the rules at Hawk’s Ridge Retirement Community. The first time Will had lacked the patience to deal with his dad’s memory loss, the first time he’d thrown out some comment that was meant—meant—to be forgotten, and his dad had glommed on to it. How could the old man recall a brief, late-night phone conversation but erase the evening Will had told him about Freddie’s death? Some cruel cosmic joke that wasn’t funny. And it had spun out of control. Time to bring the charade to a close.

Tucking the bouquet under his arm, Will scrambled up the slick rock behind the rustic summerhouse. As he sat, his iPhone vibrated in his pocket.

“Hey, Dad. How did you sleep?”

“Good, good. Had a great day, son. Had a great day.”

“Had? It’s only nine o’clock.”

“Been to Walmart and bought a map.” The old man chuckled. Chuckle was a verb Will hated, a word he would never use in his writing. His dad, however, was definitely chuckling. “Bought me a huge world map, son. To track Freddie’s trip.”

“I know, Dad. You told me yesterday.”

“I plan on showin’ it to that new guy, Bernie, down the hall. His grandsons visit every Sunday. Take him to that fancy diner on Main Street for blueberry pancakes. Wait till I tell him the whole cotton-pickin’ story about Freddie. Hell. Five years old and he has a passport. I never owned one, son. Never been outside the state.”

Will flopped onto his back. Droplets of mist fluttered to his sunglass lenses, but in his mind a slab of grief was falling from heaven, crushing him into dust. Three months and nine days, and each hour the grief took on a more solid form.

“Willie? You still there?”

Will positioned the bouquet across his chest like an arrangement of funeral lilies. “Dad, Freddie isn’t—”

“Able to contact us. Yes, yes, you told me yesterday. Shame on you, son. Just ’cos Freddie’s out of reach don’t mean we should give up on him, do it?”

“Dad—”

“Sorry, son. Poppy’s here with some more of them colored markers. Got to go.”

For real? His dad had hung up on him? Will stared at a flock of gray pigeons moving silently through a gray sky. Always he forced himself to look up, never down, forward never backward, and yet these days his mind lingered in places he didn’t want to visit: the last game of tickle monster; Freddie pumping his legs on a swing and singing “The Wheels on the Bus”; Freddie standing alone on a crowded street because the woman who should have been holding his hand had wandered off to look at a pair of five-hundred-dollar shoes in a boutique window.

If only he’d paid as much attention to Cass’s personality as he had to her ass, then maybe he would have figured out that she was a total psycho and self-medicating with alcohol. You’d have thought, given his childhood, he’d be able to spot crazy—despite the disguise of a well-cared-for body poured into sexy, couture clothes. Unlike his mom, Cass could’ve afforded the best treatment. When Will was sixteen, he’d found a psychiatrist who would take Medicaid patients, but always his dad had the same answer: “I’ve seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, son. Besides, your mama’s just high-strung. That’s the price we pay for her beauty.” As if his dad were really that shallow.

Will breathed through his nostrils, panting like a beast.

He’d spent three decades praying he didn’t have a dark side, since that concept came with seriously twisted DNA. Retreat was his strategy for relationships; anger was a soul-sucking distraction he had learned to push aside...and yet. And yet. If he allowed himself to think of Cassandra, the person who had murdered his son, who had turned his baby into a statistic, another kid killed by a drunk driver with a blood alcohol level of point two-six, Will would have to admit that he was capable of violence. How could he wish two people were still alive for such different reasons—Freddie so he could hold him and never let go; Cassandra so he could kill her himself?

Will jumped up and scrambled down the rock. There was only one thing left to do.

* * *

The light would be fading and the temperature dropping as he down-climbed, but he wanted to feel air on his back, on his exposed skin; he wanted to strip away his layers. If he could climb naked, he would. Will tugged his T-shirt over his head and tossed it into the trunk of the Prius along with his iPhone.

He pulled back his shoulders and stretched into a swan dive without leaving the ground. The clutter in his brain floated away, disappeared into the blue sky above the Shawangunk Mountains like a handful of balloons set free.

Nothing existed beyond the challenge ahead: the mastery it would take to scale Shockley’s Ceiling; the choreography of his body moving across the horizontal cracks; the euphoria of standing above the world and looking into the face of God.

He was going unroped.

He would ride doubt and push aside fear, and trust in nothing but his own judgment. And the payoff would come as his mind and body lapsed into harmony. When everything reconciled. When he found clarity. When he knew what to do next.

He grabbed his chalk bag and his nylon shoes. The rest of his rack was still in the car from his last climb. He would sort it out when he returned to the city.

Will began walking. He followed the connector trail to a twenty-foot-wide toe of rock and ignored the small group of tourist spectators. A woman with a pair of binoculars giggled.

Loss of concentration leads to poor self-control and frantic climbing.

Already, he was reading the route, decoding the puzzle, figuring out individual moves. He could climb left of the roof, but no, he would not avoid the crux. He would face the obstacle and crank it. A deceptive 5.6, pitch three demanded more skill than less-experienced climbers realized.

He strode past the large flake to the right and arrived at the base of the climb. He cracked his knuckles and stared up at the rock. No doubt, no thought except for one: I can do this.

* * *

An easy mantel would get him over. Don’t think, don’t hesitate, don’t stop.

Will pushed down on the ledge with his hands, swung his feet up, balanced and stood. Hard not to feel a little gripped. He had cleared the roof; he had nailed the crux. But he had to keep going. Momentum would take him the last sixty feet to the top. Soon he would rest but now wasn’t the time. His mind was often ready to quit before his body. He was not going to flame out.

He stepped around the corner to the second roof and eyeballed his next hold, trusting his left hand for balance.

He dipped into his chalk bag, blew on his fingertips, reached up with his right hand, found a roundish hold, gripped with his finger pads. The muscles in his shoulder stretched out. Taut. For a moment he hung, suspended in air. Time grew still, stripped down to a single camera shot, a study in absolute control. The world stopped breathing. There was nothing beyond the rhythm of the climb flowing through his limbs, through his muscles, through his breath.

He pictured his next move—a heel hook—held it in his mind, executed it. He was over the second roof.

Grabbing, pulling, swinging, Will kept moving upward into the sky.

When he topped out, he threw back his head and let his spirit soar toward the heavens. He released his voice into the air: a scream of triumph, a scream of existence, a commitment to life issued in his own private chapel. The echo floated down to the forest below, to the vast seascape of green speckled with advancing fall. Green, the color of rejuvenation, the color of life. His mind was clear; he knew his way forward. His work-in-progress may have grown cold, but Freddie’s adventure had a heartbeat. So what if it was fiction with an audience of two? He was crafting a better version of the truth, crafting a story worth living for, a story to remember. Giving his dad the gift of untainted memories when he had so few left.

Will flung his arms wide. Standing above the world, he got it. He finally got it.

In the four years since his mom’s death, his dad had been a mess of binge drinking and misfiring brain signals. Only a few weeks ago the old man had said, “People tell you it gets easier, son. But that ain’t the truth. Every day I miss your mama more.” Despite the mashed-up memory, his dad never forgot how much he still loved that one person who’d meant everything.

Just as his dad had never let go of his mom, he would never let go of Freddie.

He would never stop missing Freddie, and he shouldn’t have tried. He shouldn’t stomp down the memories. He should bust them open. He should celebrate Freddie’s life.

As soon as he got back to his apartment, he would start researching Freddie’s adventure. His last, great adventure. And for as long as it took, he would hold Freddie in the present tense.

* * *

The second he picked up his phone, Will knew he’d screwed up. Four text messages from Ally, all variations on a theme: “Where the hell are you, and why are you not answering your phone?” Then one message that said, “Have you lost your freakin’ mind?”

As he tugged his T-shirt over his neck, he glimpsed the tiny scar Ally’s teeth had left on his bicep. Thanks to his mother’s stories, he’d grown up believing that true love was a narrow path with room for only one. What a masochistic legacy to hand a commitment-phobe.

They were five years old with his-’n’-hers scraped knees when Ally bit him. It was the first time he’d tried to kiss her. He tried again at seventeen, adding a declaration of love, and she slapped him. There hadn’t been a third time. When her husband lost his Wall Street job five years ago and Will hired her, even he hadn’t been sure of his motivation. But the moment Freddie entered his life, that whimsical decision to put Ally on his payroll proved to be the wisest move he’d ever made. After all, Ally had been guarding his secrets since grade school. She’d always had his back.

He hit speed dial one and pictured five feet two inches of brown-eyed female indignation.

“You went soloing?” she yelled.

“How did you know?”

“I wouldn’t be a very effective P.A. if I couldn’t weasel information out of your publicist, would I?”

Damn. That was a silly mistake. Why had he felt the need to explain his absence from the weekly spin session?

“So, what’s up?” he said.

“A journalist from the National Enquirer. She was prowling around outside the apartment when I stopped in to check messages. She wanted to know if you were the father of Cass’s little boy.”

Will ground his teeth. “What did you tell her?”

“To move or I’d call the cops, you dolt.”

“She’s just fishing, eliminating former lovers by the math of dates. No one’s buying the story that the poor loser who died in the crash with them was Freddie’s father.” Will and Cass had only agreed on one thing outside of the bedroom: keeping Freddie’s life private and his paternity secret. Will had expected everything to change once Freddie entered the school system, but Cass, who loved to travel on a whim, kept insisting on private tutoring. No preschool, no kindergarten, but Will had been gearing up to fight for first grade. A kid needed friends. How else could he survive his parents?

“No one knows the truth except you and Seth.”

“Not strictly true. Your entire P.R. office knows. And so does Cass’s publicity machine—”

“Ally, I just worked hard to clean Cass out of my mind. Can we not talk about her?”

Ally sighed heavily. “You scared me. I thought you’d do something stupid.”

Will fiddled with the beads wound around his wrist. A one-of-a-kind gift of mini skulls strung together like shrunken heads, the friendship bracelet had been Ally’s idea of a joke the first time he hit the New York Times bestseller list: In case you get bigheaded. The one person who knew him better than anyone, and even she didn’t understand. He hadn’t driven to the Gunks that morning to end his life. He’d been trying to save it.

“Come on, darling. You know me better than that.”

“Will, you’ve barely left the apartment in three months, and suddenly you want to shimmy up a rock face alone and unroped?”

“I picked a climb I’ve done many times before.”

“When you had good reasons to live.”

“I still do.”

“Not that I don’t agree with you, but since you refuse to talk with a therapist about any of this, it’s my job to make sure you’re thinking straight. What, exactly, do you have to live for? And if you answer the Agent Dodds movie deal, I’ll bite your other bicep.”

“You. Your poor, long-suffering husband. The chocolate mimosa you guys gave me for my thirtieth birthday. My dad. All good reasons to live. Happy?”

“If you’d told me you were going, I would have come along. Kept my eye on you.”

There was a time when the thought of Ally watching him climb would have floated his boat for all eternity. Loving her had saved him many times, but like the healed scar, it was no longer a mark of anything more than his past.

“I wanted to be alone. I came here to work the piss out of a route and get my head together.”

“Be one with the rock?”

“If you want to put it that simplistically, yeah. Look, I didn’t mean to cause worry. Why don’t you take Seth out for dinner on the corporate credit card? A pre-Halloween bonus.”

“What the hell is a pre-Halloween bonus?”

“A gift from a grateful boss. Listen, I’m going to find somewhere to stay overnight. I’ll be back in the city tomorrow.”

“You want us to come join you?”

“No. It’s ninety miles—a colossal waste of time and money.”

“Promise me you’re okay, Will. No bull. Just you and me and the truth.”

Will looked back at the mountains. “I’m good.”

“Okay, but do me a favor. Please take an hour to check your email, answer some messages. Act like a guy who cares about his business.”

“I don’t need to care about my business. That’s why I have you.”

“Will—”

He knew that tone.

“Let it go, Ally. I’m doing all I can right now.”

“I know. Love you.”

“Ditto.”

“And, Will? Don’t forget you have a hair appointment tomorrow at four. Please don’t make me reschedule again. You look like a surfer dude with a really bad dye job.”

Will ducked down and glanced in his wing mirror. She had a point. He inspected a clump of dirty-blond hair. The tip was platinum—discolored by the sun during his last climb. He stood and tried to run his hand through what used to be his bangs, but his fingers snagged on a huge knot.

“Go henpeck your husband.”

She gave a laugh. “Bye, you.”

Will stared at his phone. Might as well take ten minutes to dump emails. Trashing unread messages was strangely liberating. Grief had either desensitized him or revealed that ninety percent of his life was disposable. He clicked on the email icon and began deleting. He stopped, finding one he should read—one from Hawk’s Ridge. What was his dad’s latest infraction? Will huffed out a sigh. Had the old man demanded pancakes? Circulated another petition for a fall dance?

Dear Mr. Shepard, the director had written, I trust this email will solicit prompt action on your part.

Pinching his thumb and forefinger together, Will touched the scene and then spread his fingers apart to zoom in on the type.

His dad had been right all along. Fucking bastards.